Coenzyme Q10, also called ubiquinone, is a lipid-soluble quinone compound, is a native anti-oxidant and a cellular metabolism activator produced by cells, is widely present in animals, plants and microorganisms, and is an important hydrogen carrier in respiratory chain of biological cells. Meanwhile, due to native oxidation-reduction property of quinone ring, coenzyme Q10 plays a role in protecting and recovering the integrity of biological membrane structure, stabilizing membrane potential, enhancing immune response, and the like. In recent years, coenzyme Q10, as a good biochemical agent, has been widely applied to various cardiopathys, diabetes, cancers, acute and chronic hepatitis, Parkinson's Disease, and the like, has been used to prevent arteriosclerosis, apoplexia and hypertension, and has a good health care effect on heart, liver and kidney. In addition, coenzyme Q10 also has an anti-aging effect, and thus is widely applied in the field of cosmetics and health products.
Recently, the production of coenzyme Q10 at home and abroad is mainly based on fermentation methods using microorganisms. Extraction methods from animal or plant tissues are restricted in large-scale production due to limited sources, high cost of raw materials, complicated chemical components, and low content of coenzyme Q10. Chemical synthesis methods are not suitable for modern industrial production due to stringent synthetic conditions, complex processes, products as mixtures of cis-isomers and trans-isomers, and low biological activity. Fermentation methods for producing coenzyme Q10 using microorganisms have advantages such as rich sources of raw materials, low cost, mild reaction conditions, and high biological activity of products, and thus become the most potential production methods.
Recently, the studies on fermentation methods for producing coenzyme Q10 using microorganisms are mainly focused on selection and culture of high-yield microbial strains and lab experiment level of fermentation. For example, in the patent application “Rhodobacter sphaeroides mutant of coenzyme Q10 and culturing method” as filed by “Tianchen Shenzhou Ind. Co Ltd.”, a mutant strain is obtained by means of space mutagenesis, and the fermentation unit thereof reaches 0.8 g/L; Qiao Zhixin et al., obtained high-yield strains by rapid fusion of multiple forward mutations using genome shuffling in combination with traditional mutation breeding, wherein the yield of coenzyme Q10 per unit of thalli was 8.31 mg/g. In current, there are few studies on processes of producing coenzyme Q10 in industrial scale, the fermentation level is low generally, the cycle is long, and the cost is high. In addition to the obtainment of high-yield microbial strains by various mutagenesis techniques, the addition of key promoting factors during stepwise enlargement culture and the application of dissolved oxygen feedback-fed batch culture technique to fermentation are also effective ways to enhance productivity of coenzyme Q10. There are no relevant reports yet.